The Woolco Record Department at Argyle Mall, East London, Ontario, Canada, June 1966, from the London Free Press’ Pictures From the Past series. (Click on Photo to Enlarge)

What a trip it was to see this photo of one of my old childhood record-hunting locales 40 years after it was snapped!

As a fan of history—especially cultural history from global to local—I always look forward to one of my favourite features in the London Free Press: Pictures From the Past, a weekly installment reprinting photos from the paper’s archives spanning decades.

PFTP ran a photo last June of particular interest to me of the Woolco Record Department at Argyle Mall in 1966. Having grown up in Huron Heights in the ‘60 and ‘70s, Argyle Mall was just a few minutes drive up Clarke Road. Regular trips there with both my parents and other family members means that everything about the place is burned into my memory from youth. Read the rest of this entry »

After publishing only 4 new pieces on my blog over the last 2.5 years (3 of those pieces from a couple of years ago) and missing my 6th anniversary altogether, time and circumstances have now allowed me to return to my blog. Happy 7th to me here on June 3, 2017. Read the rest of this entry »

My year-end recap is appearing late, just as it usually did back on Open Salon. But I see this as a victory that I am even getting this up online as my blogging has largely been in deep freeze since the shuttering of Open Salon—which housed the former flagship (and much more widely read) version of this blog—in March 2015.

OS shutting down is but just one fabaroony event of many that helped make 2015 a particularly rotten, rotten year for me (and I had thought 2012 was a bad one…). Mind you, last year seemed like a less than fine one around the world as well as for a high proportion of people I know, for seemingly a variety of reasons. That’s the nature of life, sometimes, so I guess I’m not an outlier in that regard. Misery and company, etc. etc.

Enough of the Deborah Downer … On the plus side, there was lots of terrific tuneage and related media to lift the spirits. And so, without further adieu, here are 15 foci from 15: the soundtrack highlights to one crappadoodles set of twelve months, starting with … Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published on OS on September 3, 2010 as part of an open call to writers on the site.

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This post was part of an Open Call here on OS for people to list and discuss 15 albums they have their greatest emotional attachments to. Since I create associations between albums/songs with, well, just about everything, trying to pick 15 LPs that are memorable owing to specific parts of my life or events would be an insurmountable task. Therefore, I zoomed through my collection, made a (long) short list and picked my 15 favourites—or what passes as such at this moment—but will briefly discuss each more in terms of memories, time and place, etc than as a critique. (The full long list appears at the bottom.)

My original copy from 1968. I’ve never known why this was unnumbered as I am pretty positive it is from the first run. Either I am mistaken or the individual numbering was solely in the UK & US. (All scans and photos on this page by VA.)

While November 22 is a date rightly associated with an enduringly significant historical moment (the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy), it also marks the anniversary for an enduringly significant musical and artistic moment too: it was 45 years ago today that The Beatles released their eponymously titled double disc, colloquially referred to as The White Album. Read the rest of this entry »

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ABOUT My Life — In Concert! … *****NOTE: Blog-wide image repairs are underway (images linked over to my opensalon.com page disappeared when the site closed). Eventually all images will be restored. Thanks for your visual patience. YOURS, THE MANAGEMENT**** Greetings! I am a terminal music fan who will be writing about my life as a concertgoer from 1975 to the present. It’s about the music but also about the lives lived along with it, with each gig recollected as a whole experience rather than simply being a description of the performance: a mix of memoir, concert review, music history, and philosophical musing. I will also sometimes publish off-theme entries, both music and non-music-related. ****** I’m on Facebook (www.facebook.com/mylifeinconcert), have a work-in-progess YouTube channel, VATV (www.youtube.com/user/mylifeinconcert). Since 2010, my primary publishing platform and audience existed over on Open Salon but that online venue sadly closed in March 2015. Welcome here to all those who were following me and commenting over there. ****** Thanks to Cublet for artwork assistance.